The faith of our fathers - Carmel Apologetics

278 THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS.and most thrilling pages of ecclesiastical historyare those which record the sufferings of Popes andPrelates, at the hands of temporal sovereigns, forconscience and for justice sake.Take, for instance, St. John Chrysostom, the greatArchbishop of Constantinople in the fifth century,and the idol of the people. He had the courage,like John the Baptist, to raise his eloquent voiceagainst the lasciviousness of the court, and particularly against the Empress Eudoxia, who ruled likeanother Jezabel. He was banished from his See,treated with the utmost indignity by the soldiers,and died in exile from sheer exhaustion and illwith the German Emtreatment.Witness Pope Gregory VII., the fearless Hildebrand,in his life-long struggleperor, Henry IV. Gregory directed all the energiesof his great mind towards reforming the abuses whichhad crept into the church of France and Germany inthe eleventh century. The Emperor of Germany,in those days, assumed the right of naming or appointing the Bishops throughout his empire. Thissacred office was commonly bestowed on very unworthy candidates, and very often put up at auction, to be sold to the highest bidder, as is now thecase with the schismatic Greek church in Turkey.These Bishops too often repaid their imperial benefactor by pandering to his passions, and by themost servile flattery.The intrepid Pope partiallysucceeded in uprooting the evil, though the effort